Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. I assume she is saying that the 161 individual lobbyists were employed by the tobacco company. If that is the case, under this Bill not one of them—not a single one—would be required to be on the register. That is why when she intervened on me I was saying that we want all lobbying activities to be brought into the full light of day, not remain in the shadows.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Has the hon. Gentleman discussed his proposals with leading national charities, because they might not wish to have to register their people, who are legitimately campaigning for their charitable purpose?

[Jon Trickett]

I have—but I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman has done so. He might be well advised to meet them first, before asking a question like that. Yes, I have met the leading charities. I have also met representative organisations of the leading charities, and I have made two things clear to them. First, if they employ lobbyists according to the definition that we want to introduce, they will have to be registered. Even the large representative organisations say that that is the right thing to do. We are talking about professional lobbyists. Throughout the country, in every neighbourhood and constituency, there is much excellent community and charitable work that is undertaken voluntarily, and that is not professional lobbying. We do not expect people who lobby us at our surgeries with a particular problem in their neighbourhood to have to register. However, if a large organisation such as a charity—I can think of some that spend £300 million a year; that is their turnover—has parliamentary consultants working for them or for third party organisations that are lobbying Parliament in the material interests of that charity, that should be registered. The register will take only a few moments to fill in—it is not a particularly arduous task—and it is right that anyone who lobbies Parliament should be on it.

That is not my view alone, and it is not the view simply of the Opposition. I have met, as I have told the Committee, all the representative organisations of the lobbying industry. I have met many chairmen, chairwomen and managing directors of the larger lobbying companies and, almost without exception, they think that the Bill is too weak and does not go far enough, so they oppose it. I have also met all the lobbying transparency campaigners. One would not think that the people who campaign for lobbying and the people who campaign to constrain lobbying would inevitably share the same point of view but, in this case, without exception, both sides say that the Bill is simply inadequate.

The Bill is simply not up to the task, and it is likely to make lobbying more opaque, rather than more transparent. By suggesting that the register should include only consultant lobbyists, the register would exclude—these are important figures; they are not mine—99% of meetings between lobbyists and Ministers; 80% of lobbyists; and 95% of lobbying activity. Much of that activity and those lobbyists are already registered on voluntary registers. More likely than not, they will deregister if the Bill is introduced. We will know less about the industry and its activities than we do now.